On Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:06:05 -0400, Nancy Gish <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Dear Rick,
>
>I wonder if you--or someone on the list can help me quickly. I'm writing a
review, and I want to quote a 1973 (approximately at least) review of Great
Tom by Margaret Manning, which seems to have been in the Boston Globe. I say
"seems" because I only have a kind of scrap of news clipping that says at
the end that she often reviews for them.
>
>I'm sorry to seem inept, but I'm recovering from being unwell for a few
weeks--the main symptom of which was fatigue--and I can't imagine getting to
a sufficiently good library and finding records back then.
>
>I can't manage to bring it up on my computer, but you seem to have magical
powers. If you could get me the citation, I would very much appreciate it.
>Best,
>Nancy
>
I can sympathize with you Nancy. I recently had a fever or something
followed by an attack from a common cold that slowed me down for awhile. I
hope you get better soon.
So far I haven't had much luck with the search. I did find that Manning was
the book review editor and critic for the Boston Globe around that time. I'm
not yet connecting her with the T.S.s though (Eliot and Matthews). However,
her name came up (unproductively) on the following webpage mentioning
another newspaper TSE listers should be familiar with. For its interest to
the list I quote from it:
http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/2007.09.16/265.html
The Second Century of the Boston Evening Transcript
An old saw has it that running a business without advertising is like
winking at a girl in the dark. You may know what you are doing, but nobody
else does.
...
In 1930 the Boston Evening Transcript celebrated the centennial of its
founding with a little book of excerpts from birthday tributes from
newspapers all around the country. All tended to support the view that among
American newspapers, the Transcript was unique: old-fashioned,
individualistic, intellectually, eager to know and to educate. “The
Transcript is the country’s thought of Boston. Its devotion to literature,
science, art, music, Harvard, the wool market, genealogy and a half dozen
other peculiarly Boston institutions, gives the Transcript a character all
its own” (Minneapolis Journal). “Under the ownership of one thrifty family,
it has managed to preserve a tone and temper of its own” (The New York
Times). “Many a cherished tradition is melting down in the fires of modern
life but the excellence of the Transcript stands up through the flame” (The
Boston Globe). “The Saturday Evening Transcript is more than a newspaper. It
combines the services of a newspaper and a magazine….perhaps no paper is
more often quoted in other newspapers than is the Transcript (Greenfield,
Mass. Gazette and Courier). And, of course, there was the cherished
chestnut “which concerns the butler who announced the arrival of the
representatives of the press by the phrase, ‘Two persons from the papers,
madame, and a gentleman from ‘the Transcript”’ (The New York Herald).
Twelve years later, the newspaper was out of business.
Why? After the death in 1934 of editor George Mandell, last of the founding
family, the paper collapsed “almost like the one-hoss shay,” according to
Louis Lyons, longtime Nieman Foundation curator. A standard boast had been
that among its readers were “the 50,000 best minds in Boston,” but
circulation probably peaked at 30,000 in 1935 — not enough to sustain it in
the lean times of the Great Depression. A brief resurrection after 1938
under a textile magnate who added comics didn’t help. Pretty soon all that
most people remembered of the Transcript was the T.S. Eliot poem of that name:
The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript
Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.
When evening quickens faintly in the street,
Wakening the appetites of life in some
And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript,
I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning
Wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to Rochefoucauld,
If the street were time and he at the end of the street,
And I say, “Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript.”
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